With no Bruins games to analyze on NESN, Brickley played golf just about every day of the lockout. His group of a dozen or so diehards played courses in Plymouth and on the Cape.

“I played my best golf in December,” Brickley said. “We’re junkies. It could be 20 degrees. As long as there’s no wind, you’re warm because you’re walking and carrying your bag.”

If the tee area was frozen, Brickley and his pals would pull out the tee markers and pound them back into ground to create holes for their wooden tees. Brickley, a 7 handicap, said he and Bruins radio analyst Bob Beers usually break even while playing for bragging rights in southern cities on the road.

“We miss Atlanta,” Brickley said, “not because we liked going there for hockey, but we miss the golf down there.”

Brickley’s emotions ran the entire spectrum during the lockout.

“From hopeful and anxious and excited,” he said, “to anger, frustration and rage to pick your adjective. The only feeling I didn’t want to get to was indifference and I never got to that point.”

Brickley, 51, had been a player rep so he understood better than most what was going on during the lockout, but he didn’t know what to tell fans who asked him when he thought it might end. A couple of months into the lockout, Brickley called a friend who works for the league to get some insight.

“I wanted to know,” he said, “what I was missing from the owners’ side other than a money grab or unadulterated greed. He basically said, ‘You’re not missing anything.’ ”

Brickley, who played more than a decade in the NHL, sided with the players.

“I still bleed a little player blood,” he said. “You knew that they were going to have to give on most things. It was just a matter of how much, and I thought they did a pretty good job.”

There was fear that the second lockout in eight years would turn off fans, but the Bruins’ 3-1 victory over the Rangers in their opener Saturday drew NESN’s highest rating for a regular-season Bruins game, a 9.4 with a 17.4 share. The previous best was an 8.9 on Jan. 7, 2012 when the Bruins played Vancouver for the first time since beating the Canucks to win the 2011 Stanley Cup. NESN has televised Bruins games since 1984.

Brickley polled fans at the opener and found no outrage, not even with owner Jeremy Jacobs, who was in the building.

“I thought the fan base could come back as strong,” Brickley said, “but I thought there would be a little bit of anger in there somewhere, but that didn’t seem to be the case. They were just excited to have the Bruins back.”

Like most Bruins fans, Brickley can’t figure out why Tim Thomas decided to take a year off at age 38 and then try to come back to the NHL next season and play for the U.S. in the 2014 Olympics.

“You have some pretty good American goaltenders,” Brickley said, “who will be in the primes of their careers and will have played over the last year plus. I think that’s a pretty tall order for Tim.”

In Thomas’ absence, Tuukka Rask allowed only two goals in Boston’s first two games before losing, 4-3, in OT Wednesday.

“I like Tuukka a lot,” Brickley said. “I think he’s a really good goalie. I think he benefits from playing in the Bruins’ system. He knows where all the shots are coming from and the Bruins do a really good job on most nights of protecting second and third chances in front of him.”

Anton Khudobin will probably play in 13 to 18 games as Rask’s backup during this compressed 48-game schedule.

“I’ve seen him in practice, I saw him in camp — he’s still a question mark to me,” Brickley said.

The Bruins have five games to figure out whether to keep rookie Dougie Hamilton or send him back to junior hockey. Brickley expects the 19-year-old defenseman to stick.

“Worst-case scenario and if he was outside the top six on defense,” Brickley said, “he’ll be here all year just to practice with the team. Going back to juniors would stunt his growth as a player. But he looked like an NHL defenseman the first two games.”

Brickley anticipates a breakout year from Tyler Seguin.

“This is a new challenge for him because that level of expectation has risen,” Brickley said. “Clearly, he’s the most skilled guy they have — passing, shooting, speed. Now it’s just a matter of putting it together.”

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15.

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